


New Lens

by Mercy



Category: The Hour
Genre: AU after series 1, Cameras, F/M, Jossed, Post-Series, photographer!Lix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercy/pseuds/Mercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lix gets a birthday present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Lens

**Author's Note:**

> I am so great at archiving things promptly. Written for Mollivanders in the [Five Acts](http://thirstyrobot.livejournal.com/121636.html) meme, April 2012. Prompts used were jewelry & glasses, banter, and a crappy diner setting.

At a grotty tea shop in a Clerkenwell back street, Freddie gives Lix a birthday present. The place smells of dishwater (much like the tea tastes), and has a thin film of grease and tobacco tar coating everything. It looks as though it was just sort of set back upright after the Blitz and then not bothered about-- there's still a rations chart hanging by the till and the furniture is barely holding itself together. It's awful all round, but Lix likes it because she has some odd fascination with Islington, and Freddie likes it because they never play the news. They both like it because they never run across anyone they know here. He's never told Bel about it and he can't put his finger on why.

Hancock's Half Hour is staticking anemically out of a radio when Freddie slides the plain-wrapped package across the chipped surface of the table. "Horrid boy," Lix says. "You don't celebrate at my age-- you mourn." 

"Just my thought," Freddie says. "It's a Zimmer frame if you were wondering." 

Lix laughs, sits back against the creaky bench and takes a last pull off her cigarette, stubs it out in the overflowing foil ashtray and dusts off her fingers. She's fresh from a long mindless morning at the World Service, glasses perched forgotten on top of her head. Freddie's been writing equally mindless copy about local council elections and debutantes. No one's seen Clarence and no one talks about him. They're all biding their time quietly, just for now. Hector's advice. Wait until it dies down. Freddie sometimes thinks he must be desperate if he's taking advice from Hector, but Bel agrees and has forbidden him on pain of death from doing anything stupid in the meantime. There's a plan. It just happens to be a slow one. 

Finally Lix leans forwards again to open her present. The ring on a chain that she'll never say anything about slips out of her collar. Freddie likes to toy with it in cold greyish dawn hours when it's easier to say things, and make up stories about it. Nothing that would ever touch his theories about the truth of it-- just secret affairs with Persian princes or epic magical quests ripped from the pages of that Tolkien fellow. She never betrays anything and he'd expect nothing less. 

"You might as well have got me the latest model Hoover for all I'll use this," Lix scoffs, but she's smiling underneath trying not to, because one truth she was willing to tell him is that the Speed-Graphic camera that was an extension of her right arm during the War ended up with a cracked lens she never bothered to have replaced. The bit of truth mumbled into his shoulder was that she misses it sometimes. Freddie takes great care with giving presents, like Bel's yellow lamp and the inscription on the cigarette case he presented to Hector when he mentioned his wedding anniversary, so he'd snooped into her closet while she was sleeping and got the model of the camera that sits on the top shelf, pristine and clean next to dusty shoeboxes full of old papers. He'd had to resort to subterfuge that morning about why he was up, so he'd made her coffee and she'd accused him of being romantic. 

"I can return it," Freddie says, reaching for the box. "Your flat could use a good hoovering."

"Don't you dare. The dust and I come as a package deal." 

"Well, then, there's a man a few streets over from here who'll put it on for you. Rockford something. Give him my name, it's paid for." Freddie knows she knows him because there was a card in the camera case from the most recent servicing, a full five years after Lix claims to have last used the camera.

"You give terrible presents."

"I give brilliant presents, admit it." 

"If you'd been properly brilliant, you would have realized I could put it on myself. They're meant to be able to take different lenses, you know."

"Swindled. Rockford's your prince, isn't he? He's jealous. Already dosed me with a slow-working poison and he'll be kidnapping you the minute we walk out of here. I'll be dead so you're buggered, as it's up to Hector and Isaac to save you."

"No, darling, Bel will wake you with true love's kiss." 

Shut up, he wants to say, squirms in his seat at her smirk. "And I'll ride in on my majestic steed, shall I?"

" _Will Steward Hancock please report to the kitchens immediately. Will Steward Hancock please report to the kitchens immediately_ ," says the radio. 

"No, you'll be where you ought to," Lix says. 

"Shut up, and say thank you," says Freddie, and Lix lets him ignore the rest of it for now, kisses him in the alley before they're standing like strangers on the Tube. 

There's a big crush at Charing Cross of people rabbitting their way back from lunch and she lets herself be pressed against his side, says low and smokey in his ear, "As I seem to be celebrating properly, I'll be turning twenty-nine at the Soleil this evening. Bring Bel, I don't mind. Bring the whole gang." 

"Only if you'll dance with me and I get to lead this time," Freddie shout-whispers back, steals the glasses off her head and crosses his eyes under them.

"Don't dance with me, idiot. Dance with her." Lix takes back her glasses and puts them back where they were. 

"I plan to," he says, and risks taking his arm off the pole to squeeze her hip. "But it's your birthday."

"Stupid," Lix says, but leans into him. 

They're all biding their time, quietly.


End file.
